Tracklist

Greatest Hits, The Garden

You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me waiting through spring and summer
You will find me waiting waiting for the fall
You will find me waiting for the apples to ripen
You will find me waiting for them to fall
You will find me by the banks of all four rivers
You will find me at the spring of conciousness
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it's pouring down with rain

Ba-oommpff!
Let’s do it, let’s do it, let’s do it a Dada!
At Herzfeld’s I once had breakfast
in Steglitz or Wilmersdorf
with Wieland I had an argument
with Wieland, not with John
I passed him the scissors
I cooked him the glue
In no dictionary
has there ever been this entry
just you and me my darling
we know what it really means
Let’s do it, let’s do it, let’s do it a Dada!
I played chess with Lenin
Zurich, Spiegelgasse
I knew Jolifanto in the flesh
I even once bathed with the urtext
I played with Anna
I played with Hannah
I know where the church tower stands
I passed her the kitchen knife
I cooked her the glue
Hawonnnti!
Let’s do it, let’s do it, let’s do it a Dada!
A big yes and a small no
I drank large amounts
drank with George
but was still not at hand
on the cellar steps
that morning in Savignyplatz
I helped Kurt build his houses
Nos. 1, 2 and 3
I passed him the saw
I cooked him the glue
Aaah, Signore Marinetti
Back from Abyssinia?
Just you and me my darling
we know what it really means
Let’s do it, let’s do it, let’s do it a Dada!

In the space of just one slipped beat of the tongue
there is big bang and total entropy
from red giants to white dwarfs
the whole scale
of cosmic dimensions are falling
out of my mouth
in the description of a kiss
of the interimlovers
of the interimlovers
in the interim
between microphone and macrocosm
between chaos and on no course
between plankton and philosophia
between semtex an utopia
there they are
the interimlovers
in their communal mouth
lives a colibri
with each humming beat of its wings
too swift for the eye to see
cultures flourish and perish
whole continents vanish
here are no harmless words
all by far too large
an example most simple explodes
in 10^14 for
the interimlovers
the interimlovers
in the interim
between toothache and oil of cloves
between genesis and sixsixsix
between c" and vitamin c
between ultramarine and navy frigate
the interimlovers are intimate
the interimlovers
in the
INTERIM
in the course of just one
winking beat of an eye
they have putsched
the government was felled
parliament dissolved
elections held
results annulled
new elections called
then finally exiled
in history reviled
I wade through the filth of mighty
metaphors
meta, meta, meta by metre
with gestures far too wide
for the interimlovers
the interimlovers
are lovers in the interim
between temporary and tempura
between rope and sword dance
between times and on the sea floor
between semtex and utopia
they lay in each others arms
thirstily devour
that last little drop of light
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet
the lovers
the interimlovers
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet
not really
the interimlovers
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet

Here live the blind
who believe what they see
and the deaf
who believe what they hear
bound and gagged to kitchen-stool
sits a fool, who believes
in all he can feel
(his hands in his lap)
Second floor:
roll after roll
length after length
in woodchip wallpaper
lone tenants stand around
observing the walls with frowns
searching row by row
looking for printing and spelling mistakes
they couldn't even decipher their own names
Up to the next floor!
Which, oh wonder! Never completed
can only be reached by the stairs
here are stored errors, which belong to the firm
and with which they tile the floors
upon these none may tread
Fourth floor:
here lives the architect
immersed in his plan of
this building crammed with ideas
it stretches from funda- to firmament
and from it`s foundations to the firm
In the ground floor.
there are four doors
they lead
directly out-of-doors
or more precisely: to the corner-stone
he who wants to can wait there
the concrete's coming at twelve
corner-stone lego
thought passages are painted over
in head-height brown
infamous or catholic purple
for better orientation
Top floor:
has some damage
in the rafters an old man sits
dead angels are strewn across the floor
(their faces resemble his)
between his knees he holds a gun
he aims it at his mouth
and into the skull
and out of the skull
and out of the skull's other side
into the roof's apex
drills that bullet god has shot himself
now a topfloor can be renovated
god has shot himself
now a top floor can be renovated
lies, lies
a top floor can be renovated

Greatest Hits, Sabrina

It's not the red of the dying sun
The morning sheets surprising stain
It's not the red of which we bleed
The red of cabernet sauvignon
A world of ruby all in vain
It's not that red
It's not as golden as Zeus famous shower
It doesn't come, not at all, from above
It's in the open but it doesn't get stolen
It's not that gold
It's not as golden as memory
Or the age of the same name
It's not that gold
I wish this would be your colour
I wish this would be your colour
I wish this would be your colour
Your colour, I wish
It is as black as malevitch's square
The cold furnace in which we stare
A high pitch on a future scale
It is a starless winternight's tale
It suits you well
It is that black
I wish this would be your colour
I wish this would be your colour
I wish this would be your colour
Your colour, I wish

The place it occured was November grey, steady drizzle rain
come with me
above the birds, the clouds, to the highest point
I have donned the coronet of rays, Corona
in it mirrored my gleaming head
be my passenger
standing in the headwind, in the solar wind
in shimmering gold, in purple swathed
through peril leads our path and images of beasts
Come aboard my sun barque!
come aboard my sun barque!
In the crimson east Aurora opens up her rose portals
the stars take flight
the moon’s sickle paling at its rim
our course climbs steeply as we embark at dawn
reaching giddy heights in the apex of the sky
the path tips abruptly towards its end
Come aboard my sun barque!
come aboard my sun barque!
The darkness banished
with furious flames
consuming blaze
the whole world cracks apart
even in the underworld light seeps in through cracks
filling its rulers with fear and dread
Come aboard my sun barque!
come with me aboard my sun barque!
Come with come with come with come with come with me
Come with come with come with come with come with me
Come with come with come with come with come with me
Come with come with come with come with come with me
Come aboard my sun barque!

Haggard and emaciated
as recollected
loaded in at the same place
as where you got off
on the lips the same questions still
about the first things, the last days
or simply just about substances
Let us go home
You ask me, old man,
where are you harbouring what I had in mind?
Is it inscribed or was it drowned?
I say
your doings alone are what remain of me
beneath layers, years, annual rings
it is yet still engraved
Let us go home
to yours and mine
I sing of our catastrophes
intonate the breakdowns
I join in each deceptive cadence
I extemporize upon your harmonies
up to the refrain, to the finale
Let us go home
Susej
We have to make everything work in reverse
Susej
Climb down from your skull hill
Susej
back through streets and alleys
Susej
the rabble and the masses
they can go home now
Susej
Call the astromagic off
even the Magi can go home
Susej
They can all go home
All
Ajulellah
Ajulellah
Ajulellah
Ajulellah
Be transitory!

Greatest Hits, Total Eclipse Of The Sun

The beauty, tender glow extinguished
the sky dull from a breeze
ghostly the dawn without its red
uncanny, stranged to our nature
the light like lead
ripped in the dark
a tiny sichle
as small as cut by a surgical knife
the suns last spark melts away
not unlike a dying wick
now stands disc on disc
and crushes my heart
All I really, really, really want to see
is a total eclipse of the sun
‚Ah‘ says everyone
just as the birds are silent
with surprise
All I really, really, really want to see
is a total eclipse of the sun

Everything here is unchanged
it looks like everywhere
This whole area is out of my way
so I rarely come around here
Here are those who went
and those who were made to leave
Here are those for whom I appeared
in the last film in flight in free fall
Most of them are still very hungry
and they don't even have cigarettes
so they just cling to the ideas.
There is a place around the corner
where your dead friends live...
Some drift through places and thoughts
blind passengers in subways and busses
or they simply stand around and wait
Even those who couldn't wait any longer
here they have nothing else to do
Especially at night they are bothered by boredom
There is a place around the corner
where your dead friends live...
It is nothing
It is nothing
I call you by your old names
I do not change my tone of voice
I let them fall like they always fell
now that you are just not visible not touchable
and also unassailable
It's all still the the same
only you are waiting in between
not very far you're rather close
around the corner so to speak
around the corner so to speak
around the corner so to speak
It is nothing
It is nothing
It is nothing
It is

Across the scarfaced terrain
slowly disappearing
only phantom pain remains
Scarcely audible foul laughter seeps out
from the red Info Box
making some turn quietly in their graves
Nothing but future ruins
material for the next layer
Mela, Mela, Mela, Mela, Melancholia
Melancholia, mon cher,
Mela, Mela, Mela, Mela, Melancholia
floats over the new city
and over the land
Over the control centres
over the stubble fields of concrete
over the secret net of bunkers
refusing to be wiped out
Marlene go home!
also over the Marlene-Dietrich-Platz
The new temples are already cracked
future ruins
one day grass will also grow over the city
over its final layer
Mela, Mela, Mela, Mela, Melancholia
Melancholia, mon cher,
Mela, Mela, Mela, Mela, Melancholia
floats over the new city
and over the land
In the lascerated sky
flown to bits by the jets rehearsing
she hangs with widespread wings
sleepless and with frozen gaze
pointed at rubble
behind her the future piling up
slowly she flies higher and higher
at last surveys the entire land
What is the lay of the land?
What is the lay of the land?
What is the lay of the land?
What is the lay of the land?

My hands, my arms, my legs, my body and I
the immutable, indestructible, self, I.
The centre, the nucleus, the entire human cell culture.
Am I, is me in every cell?
Though hardly ‘I’ is the sum of the genetic material,
as if the music were lodged inside the radio’s wiring diagram.
Is there anything redundant, solidified, that can be peeled off, that can
be discarded like ballast, sandbags out of a free balloon?
Layer for layer, epidermis, mesenchyme and dermis, fibres, muscles,
tendons, flesh, capillaries, veins, blood vessels, fatty tissue, nerve tracts, bones,
marrow, skeleton. And where does what remain?
The ‘I’ makes claims as long as a tongue, a fidgeting hand
can claim ‘I’? And if possible, that too is claimed headlessly.
(Like cephalophors, with a single stroke, a head shorter)
Reduct!
What happens in love, outreaching oneself or overstepping, or
the numbness, up to a certain point, that point where still ‘something’ remains.
The hollow nut (that has not developed), anyway: development,
as if something had been enveloped, Ariadne’s thread, unrolled to its fullest length,
needing to be used up. Always along the wall, dead certain,
the way out of the garden, the garden maze.
I wander to while away time as if time might otherwise descend on me, like a scavenging beast.
Reduct!
Let’s just reduce the lot on a slow flame!
Reduct!
We peer into the stream of the perished now being swept down the passage of time,
through the delta towards the mouth, out into the gaping cosmic ocean.
Are there any more coming? Do corpses have something left to say?
Besides: Look! Scandal! We are they who you are still to become! We are there! You are not!
But death stays hated to all of human nature
it tears down hope almost to the ground
Reduct!
The foundations are in the wrong place, this house should have been set in the heavens,
so the gods can die, regularly and in temporally classical proportions.
The golden section through the throat of a venerable celestial body that
then, in short thrusts, ejaculates its divine blood into the seraphic summer morning,
because it is forever summer, until one or the other, me included, can say:
Finally, infinitely, left in peace, but moveable, free to make noise, without guilt!
Reduct!

The town lies under mist
I am up on my mountain
in my black garden
squeezed in between the heavens
in the enclave of my choice
where I am hiding
in Nagorny Karabakh
Once deep forests
mountain chains, maybe ice
a brass-yellow sun
perpetrates a paradise
my sys- or diastole
and between them the moment
borne by the birds
about their business here
in the enclave of my heart
where I lose myself
in Nagorny Karabakh
I climb down the mountain
enter one or another valley
flying flags of every colour
in Mount Karabakh
Two large black ravens
devouring the plums in the tree
I wonder if the other city cares for me...
In the enclave of my choice
where I am hiding
in Nagorny Karabakh
Come and pay me a visit
I have unlimited time
and the view is most lovely
over the clouds and the town
in Nagorny Karabakh
Nagorny Karabakh
Nagorny Karabakh

Salamandrina Salamandrina Salamandrina
not muses, fairies, elves, sylphs
nymphs or mermaids
for you the moths I wish to understand
they just cannot withstand
for you I am a mere phoenix,
my history well-known
only once again, never, never nothing new
learnt
Salamandrina Salamandrina Salamandrina
first I stake my hand in the fire
and by it haul myself inside
then themselves do flames consume
and I will become one too
Salamandrina Salamandrina Salamandrina
„In girum imus nocte
et consumimur igni“
at night we wander around in circles
and are consumed by fire
Salamandrina Salamandrina Salamandrina
you’ll never be consumed by fire
Salamandrina Salamandrina Salamandrina
you’ll never be consumed by fire

Greatest Hits, How Did I Die?

I was in a crater
pockmarked fields on either side
I was meant to be all safe
How did I die?
How did I die?
or didn’t I?
Un sursaut, une crispation,
mon corps soudain
comme voulant s’engloutir
dans la terre.
How did I die?
How did I die?
or didn’t I?
Didn’t I die at all?
I fell into a ditch
inside an A7V
on the end facing
Mephisto is it’s name
How did I die?
How did I die?
or didn’t I?
Ein schwarzes Biest
ein Splitterregen
über den Bäumen zerspringt
und niedergeht
How did I die?
How did I die?
or didn’t I?
Didn’t I die at all?
Now there is only that sinister brown belt,
a strip of murdered Nature. It seems to belong to another world. Every sign of humanity has been swept away. The woods and roads have vanished like chalk wiped from a board; of the villages nothing remains but gray smears where stone walls have tumbled together. A confused mass of troubled earth. Columns of muddy smoke spurt up continually as high explosives tear deeper into this ulcered area.
How did I die?
I fell from the sky
or didn’t I?
I filled my mouth with water
so the bullet could suceed
How did I die?
How did I die?
Did I die by my own hand?
or didn’t I?
How did I die?
Or didn’t I die at all?
How did we die?
or didn’t we?
didn’t we die at all?
We didn’t die
We didn’t die
We are back with a different song
We didn’t die
We didn’t die
We’re just singing a different song
we are back with a change of weather
ein anderer Wind, ein neues Lied
We didn’t die
We didn’t die
We give you a different song
okookookookooskrookookookookoo
the difference is in the song
okookookookooskrookookookookoo
– difference makes the song
We didn’t die
We didn’t die
We didn’t die
We didn’t die

I'm on the run
from outraged masses
Across the wilderness
I came to the end
Waiting at the entrance for a long time
Dumb and without a plan
First there is a storm
but you are not carried along
Then there is an earthquake
but you are also not involved
From below I will fiercely pull on
the roots
until the upper world should move
Col de ma ma daqua
A whisper light and low
A voice of floating silence
And if there were tremendous waters
I know you wouldn't partake in any more floods
Even if it rains meteors today
You are just not taking part
I will fiercely pull on all
twenty two roots
Until the upper world should move
I raise my voice against it
'till out of the whisper the answer wafts to me

A concept of “conceptlessness” was created at that time from a spontaneous idea (many thought it was an April Fool’s joke when the Einstürzende Neubauten first stood on the stage at Berlin’s “Moon” on April 1, 1980; more than 35 years ago), from which the “brilliant dilettantes” developed their own strategy against social and musical architecture using metal pipes, feathers and machines. In keeping, Blixa Bargeld constructed metaphor-laden poetry, around which unique worlds of sound were built up from objects of the most varied origins. The band discovered sounds beyond the pain barrier, the beauty of dissonance and the aesthetics of the scrapyard.

They are regarded as the most important engines in the development of new musical strategies. Hardly another German band has characterized the music landscape as lastingly as EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN. Their influence on the music world was and is as great as their timeless character.

How to continue? Not because one can or because one must, but because one does. The title track of Einstürzende Neubauten’s 2004 album said it right: Perpetuum Mobile. Once fully set in motion – by West Berliners Blixa Bargeld and NU Unruh and Alexander Hacke in the early 1980s – Einstürzende Neubauten have pressed on regardless. Indeed since percussionist Rudolf Moser and former Die Haut guitarist Jochen Arbeit joined 19 years ago, the Einstürzende Neubauten line-up has not only been their longest lasting; going on the evidence gathered here, it’s arguably their broadest ranging and most fruitful partnership, with Rudi and Jochen always gamely responding to the musical challenges posed by NU Unruh’s battery of invented instruments and devices. Along with multi-instrumentalist Alex Hacke, who took over bass after the departure of Mark Chung (after their 1992 album Tabula Rasa) and FM Einheit (during the recording of 1996’s Ende Neu), they willingly switch between their chosen instruments and NU Unruh’s inventions, sounding the depths, tapping, scratching and hammering out beats, or drawing haunting tones from the seemingly most ungiving of source materials presented to them, invariably in the service of the song. And how does the song go? “We didn’t die”, sings Blixa, “we‘re just singing a different song”.
“The difference”, he goes on to clarify, “is in the song”.

The song in question, “How Did I Die?”, comes from Lament, Einstürzende Neubauten’s 2014 soundtrack to a specially commissioned live performance by the Belgian Flemish town of Diksmuide to mark the centenary of its fall to German troops at the outbreak of the First World War. It might be steeped in the history of catastrophe but it’s also the newest track on Greatest Hits, the compilation album named after the special shows they’ve been touring the world with these past few years, initially while they were researching and preparing Lament for its Belgian premiere performance.

The music for those Greatest Hits shows was largely drawn from the last 27 years, and then most all of it created by their current longest lasting line-up. The earliest track here, however, is a newly mixed version of “Haus Der Lüge”, the title track of their 1989 album Haus Der Lüge; except it’s now adorned with freshly recorded trombone and string parts, which the group wanted on the original but couldn’t afford, so had to use synth simulations instead. 1993’s Tabula Rasa is represented by two tracks, “Die Interimsliebenden” and “Salamandrina”. It’s the last album to feature bass player Mark Chung, who joined in 1981 shortly after FM Einheit, aka Mufti, while they were both members of the Hamburg punk group Abwärts. Mufti himself left during the recording of 1996’s Ende Neu, and he doesn’t actually feature on Greatest Hits’ opening track “The Garden”, the first line of which was inspired by an English woman overheard by Blixa: “If you want me you will find me in the garden/Unless it’s pouring down with rain”.

Here begins proper the phantasmagoric journeys documented on Greatest Hits, taking Einstürzende Neubauten – so the song goes – to the banks of all four rivers and the spring of consciousness, through all four seasons while waiting for the apple to fall. And the music they’ve made on those journeys has reflected those changing seasons, responding to the changing times, refracting those hard knocks. Five tracks are taken from their 2000 album Silence Is Sexy: “Sabrina”, “Sonnenbarke”, “Total Eclipse Of The Sun”, “Redukt” and “Die Befindlichkeit Des Landes”. , Translating as “The Lay Of The Land”, “Die Befindlichkeit Des Landes” also featured in Einstürzende Neubauten’s melancholic soundtrack to Hubertus Siegert’s Berlin Babylon, a 2001 documentary about the changing face of the purportedly unified city since the November 1989 fall of the Cold War-built Wall dividing it since 1961. The ten minute piece “Redukt”, meanwhile, has become a live favourite, long ago replacing the early Einstürzende Neubauten staple “Sehnsucht”, both as a showcase for the group’s extraordinary capacity for invention, and as a vent for the emotions accumulated over the course of a concert.

During the 2000s, Einstürzende Neubauten’s resourcefulness extended beyond the stage and the recording studio into the economics of alternative music practice. In response to the worldwide decline of the record industry, neubauten.org webmaster (and Blixa’s wife) Erin Zhu proposed a new working model based on the close relationship built up between the group and their fans. Her business plan provided Einstürzende Neubauten the means to bypass the ever more controlling music industry and continue down their own path, as indeed they always have done. Two Greatest Hits tracks, “Dead Friends (Around The Corner)” and “Ein Leichtes Leises Säuseln”, originated on their Supporters Album #1, which in publicly modified form became Perpetuum Mobile (Mute, 2004). Something like 2000 supporters financially pledged their faith in Einstürzende Neubauten two more times, for which they received Grundstück (2005) as their first dividend, followed by a special supporters’ version of the self-released Alles Wieder Offen (Potomak, 2007). The latter provides the following three tracks to Greatest Hits: Einstürzende Neubauten’s playful homage to early 20th century’s dada pranksters “Let’s Do It A Da Da”, “Susej” and “Nagorny Karabach”.

The last named is a simultaneously haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful psychogeographical piece that stands as one of Einstürzende Neubauten’s greatest album hits. As the song indicates, they have taken more than a few hard knocks, bumps and glitches on the way, but there’s no stopping them now.

Now as then as always, declares Greatest Hits’ aforementioned newest track “How Did I Die?”, “The difference makes the song”.